Install and configure Redis on Ubuntu 16.04 with systemd

install-redis.md

1. Install pre-requisities

sudo apt-get install build-essential tcl

2. Install Redis

cd /tmp
curl -O http://download.redis.io/redis-stable.tar.gz
tar xzvf redis-stable.tar.gz
cd redis-stable
make
make test
sudo make install

3. Configure Redis

sudo mkdir /etc/redis
sudo cp /tmp/redis-stable/redis.conf /etc/redis
sudo nano /etc/redis/redis.conf

In the file, change the supervised directive's value to systemd.

...
supervised systemd
...

Next, specify the working directory for Redis. This is the directory that Redis will use to dump persistent data. We can use /var/lib/redis

...
dir /var/lib/redis
...

Save and close the file.

4. Configure systemd to start Redis on boot

sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/redis.service

Copy the contents of this gist to the file, save and close.

5. Create Redis user, group and directories

sudo adduser --system --group --no-create-home redis
sudo mkdir /var/lib/redis
sudo chown redis:redis /var/lib/redis
sudo chmod 770 /var/lib/redis

6. Start the Redis service and set Redis to start on boot

sudo systemctl start redis
sudo systemctl enable redis

I also had to update my redis config to run as a daemon using daemonize yes

You might also need Type=forking under [Service] in redis.service

thanks

@harveymatt systemd actually has a problem when you run redis with daemon yes. See: https://serverfault.com/questions/616430/why-isnt-systemctl-starting-redis-server-on-centos-7

very nice

According to the docs, supervised systemd is intended solely for Type=notify and daemonize yes corresponds to Type=forking.

Alternative settings that seem to be equivalent:

redis.conf	redis.service
daemonize no supervised systemd	Type=notify
daemonize no supervised no	Type=exec
daemonize yes supervised no	Type=forking

Example config: Gist.

How do i migrate from apt install redis to this?

And need to remember to change the permissions of the config file.
sudo chown redis:redis /etc/redis/redis.conf

I was getting an error when changing the redis configuration using the command redis-cli config rewrite until I changed the ownership of the conf file:

(error) ERR Rewriting config file: Permission denied

In my case, I had in redis.conf

daemonize no
supervised systemd

and in redis.service Type=notify
And starting the redis service with systemd would just hang.
Solution for me was: just get rid of Type=notify